June 15, 2016

My students were lucky enough to have a visit from a Philly muralist and street artist (and Kaleidoscope parent!) SEPER.

We looked at some slides of his work, mused about the tools and techniques he might use, and watched a time lapse video of one of his murals going up. The kids were so stoked to learn that we'd not only be meeting the artist, but we'd also be collaborating with him that very day.

Anthony set up a demo outside, and taught us the tricks of the trade. After watching him put down the first layer, the kids got to take turns trying out spraypaint for the first time.

A quick aside: I found these awesome, tiny cans of MTN water based spray paint. The nozzles were easier enough for little kids to manipulate, and they're easy to clean, safe, and spray like a straight up dream. Really, I can't recommend these enough. NICE PAINT. (Not cheap, but....write a grant or something.)

Kids combined button-pushing fine motor skills and large sweeping motions while experimenting hands-on with the materials street artists use on the regular. Lot of patience and turn taking and decision making too!

At the end of the day, we had two rad collab paintings to show:

"Ring Dash" and "Cool Kids"

So what other artists want to come in and do a demo? I want to host a million next year.

June 4, 2016

I love to do photography projects with little kids, and this year we had the opportunity to experiment with real cameras, real film, and real, tangible pictures.

This year we checked out the photomontage joiners of David Hockney, comparing his iconic gridded Polaroids and sprawling film collages. Students learned about portrait, still life, and landscape photography through his work, and thought about looking at things from multiple perspectives!

Students tried out both techniques, first making gridded portraits of their classmates using instant film. In this case, the students were the photographers, and directed the shoots. After a solid day of photography "practice" (photoshoots with unloaded cameras), students spent two days photographing with my FujiMax Instax, then spent a third day arranging the photos of themselves into their final compositions.

I am like, In Love with these pictures but will begrudgingly send them home.

As a companion project, I photographed entire classes, making sure to take lots of pictures from various angles. The students helped decide which ones should be printed and carefully assembled them into cohesive puzzles.

PUPPY JAWNS is a showcase of students' best/funnest/funniest artwork, and represents a variety of projects completed at home, at school, or in early education. Some lesson plans I developed myself, others are collaborative projects or adopted from other teachers and bloggers.